Activist Interactive Design

Main menu

Post navigation

Deconstructing the Game: Renegade Ops

The controls are twin stick shooter style with the left stick controlling the driving and the right stick controlling shooting (of a machine gun). But unlike many twin stick shooters there seems like there is an asymmetry to the feel of each stick causing the control to feel a little conflicted toward the goal of killing everything in sight.

Driving the vehicles around, whether it’s the 4 wheeled jeep/buggy type vehicle or the helicopter, has this almost imperceptible feeling of imprecision. While the copter totally makes sense (I am usually terrible at controlling any sort of semblance of realistic choppers), the buggy jeep slides around in the same fashion regardless of driving through water, on grass/dirt or in a giant lab/factory. This isn’t a “bad” design choice per say, it’s just that I feel that when taking turns or changing direction the vehicle slips and slides a little bit too much for my tastes causing the vehicle to get stuck around corners or in little ditches and the amount of imprecision took some getting used to. Over time you learn to control your movements more and let off the gas much quicker, but the looseness still cost me a few lives here and there even after hours of play.

Then there is the strange opposite feeling that the gun targeting system is moving in a slower and more 8 way diagonally restrained fashion without a similar smoothness as the vehicle. With how wide the turns can be along with some floaty moments when controlling the vehicle, having the gun kind of fight against that motion has also led to a couple of lives lost in the heat of things.

In the end I’d say that death because of control didn’t happen too often though, and just some slight tweaks to both the vehicle control and the gun control could have helped out quite a bit to keeping everything feel fluid while being very precise as well. Also, perhaps letting the gun shoot in a full 360 instead of the 8 way diagonal would have really given the control to the player.